Working Your Way Through School

High school students: Would you be attracted here for college? Every student works 4 hours a week to improve the school. If he or she has a scholarship of any sort - 8 hours a week.

But you never know what your assignment will be on a given day. Maybe demolishing an adobe building,

........ and discovering interesting things.

Could be joining Johnnie to feed the hogs.

The second year nursing students are clearing the drainage ditches in the rain.

Which merits a little hot tea.

Gracia processes pork products.

....and there is always grass to be cut. This is not the only way to cut grass here, of course. The horses, the mule and goats assist.

Luis Angel volunteered to paint the bell tower roof - wearing his leather "Chacarero" hat with the turned-up brim.

And so over the 15 years since Sr. Damon founded the college, much of the building and maintaince has been done by students.

Volunteer's House

In the picturesque Coroico valley, in the town of Carmen Pampa we volunteers live in more luxurious fashion than the nearby rural Bolivians.




We live in the historic adobe hacienda of the former owner of this entire valley. Local people remember those days before land reform in 1952 when they were indentured servants.

Jose Tintia recalls his father emerging from this house bloody after being whipped.

Here we volunteers live in relative comfort...

Instead of a wood-fired clay oven we use a gas stove.


Instead of an open fire on the ground we use a grill.


















We boil all our drinking water
and strain the mud out
with a clay-filter pot.















The only hot water in the house is in the showers. This hot-water-on-demand electric 220 volt shower head is a real comfort.







We wash dishes indoors.....






....and clothes outdoors.

The volunteer's room

might look like this one.

And may have a sunrise view of the pueblo of San Juan de Miel across the valley and the homes and tiny farm plots of the Bolivian campesinos who struggle to make a better day for their children.

Mural Artists

Lee spent the month of July working with young mural painters Oscar Mendia (right) and Carlos Rosas.

In Franciscan Monastery in Tarata, Oscar painted a group of Franciscans leaving this monastery 100 years ago for six months of travel to teach in distant pueblos. The actual faded photos of departing missionaries are a little different. They depict horse-mounted bands of Franciscans wearing wide-brimmed hats, boots and ponchos - rough riders with bibles.

The long tradition of using painting to educate is still vibrant here. Consider this downtown mural that Oscar did.

Or this painting of the prophet Jeramiah
by another artist - Speaking Truth to Power.

Burn Clinic

We spent the month of July volunteering in Cochabamba. Jean worked at a new clinic for children with burns. The children are brought from distant pueblos to the hospitals here where, after treatment, they they were released to their hometowns. But they cannot get the therapy they need in the small pueblos leaving them severely restricted in movement.







The Franciscans have remodled one half of the historic San Francisco convent still used by the Carmelites sisters. The sisters donated it for a social center - soup kitchen, medical and dental clinics, AA meeting space - and a burn clinic where these children stay and receive therapy.







Their parents must return home, of course. Often they are 8 hours away by bus, but they visit when they can.




Lee's former workplace, Zink Inc., donated a product that has closed some of the distance between children and papas. Zink has released a small inkless printer which instantly processes digital photos in the field somewhat like the old Polaroids.* (See Lee's hand.)

When parents visited we were able to give them and the child an immediate photo to help bridge the expanse of time between visits.

Somewhat to our surprise the children were eager to have their own photos also. The photos seemed to help them begin to come to terms with the new stranger's face in the mirror.

Jean also worked at a home for street boys. Here she is mending clothes. The kids ran to bring favorite pants and shirts - more in tatters than whole.

*The Zink (Zero-ink) products just coming on the market utilize a new photo paper which contains layers of color crystals. As the paper passes through the heated print-head crystals melt then "freeze" to their characteristic colors. US suppliers like Best Buy sell the Poloroid Pogo for about $150. Prints cost about 20 cents. A camera with built-in printer is about to be released also.

Everyone Danced

On the feast of St. Francis this year, we held a fiesta to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the University - four days of sports championships, dramas, variety acts.......and dancing.

In the rain and in the mud every student danced. Teachers and administrators danced.







The director, Padre Freddy, danced.

Miss UAC-Carmen Pampa

slipped out of her shoes

to dance.

Different departments chose from the hundreds of different Bolivian folk dances - each with its own history and symbolism.

Below is the Tobas from the hot Amazonian jungles.

The Vet department did the Waca-Waca (cow dance) below.

This dance which Dan and Lee are adroitly performing is called the Morenada. First done by black slaves who worked the mines for Spanish overlords. The 45 pound costumes spoof the courtly dress of the Spanish royalty.

This dance is called a Tinku. It was done in villages that were split into an upper and lower half, or in close neighboring pueblos which were at odds with each other. They dressed in their best clothes to dance a reconciliation in holy week each year. The costume includes leather helmits because the dance ended in a ritual but real and sometimes deadly fight - with stones, fists, iron knuckles, etc. Women fought as bravely as the men. When there are injuries and deaths it served to insure good crops the following year.

The dance in Carmen Pampa included only a symbolic brawl in the mud (above). Traditionally all harm was forgiven immediately - even by the parents who lost a child in the brawl. The two warring towns made up and purged all resentment of the previous year. The dance is still common but much tamer. However, even now in the rural areas, there are occasional deaths.

Then there were some who selflessly gave up the chance to stomp mud and roll in the rain in order to record all this. Jean photographed.

Children's Library

The children’s library, which some of you contributed to so generously, is keeping us busy these days. We open every evening for a few hours and a few afternoons as well.

Some university students help out during their work-study time.

The 200 plus books are being well circulated. It is really something to see juniors in high school reading and enjoying the illustrations in Where the Wild Things Are (Donde Viven Los Montruos).

They had - and have - little access to books throughout their childhood. The elementary grades have one text , a reading book . The third grade reader, for example, deals with such topics as, the bones, the departments of Bolivia, traffic rules, and the digestive system – so it is a science, social studies, geography, all around text.

Right now we have 70 library users signed up from pueblos as far as an hour’s walk away. A second grader, Kevin, (pronounced K’been) is about to fill his borrowers sheet which means he has borrowed 50 books. He deserves a little reward - maybe a box of crayons or a pencil and a sharpener . . .

During the evening library hours when they stop in to return and pick out another book many will stay to play cards or checkers or Scrabble. Puzzles are also quite popular among all ages. Watching the junior high schoolers doing simple puzzles over and over demonstrates better than words the needs we are trying to fill.

One of the University students in the art room
Lee has set up carved a beautiful sign which we

hang when the library is opened.

Thanks to all for your support! Jean